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from the cars-start-on-fire-all-the-time-anyway dept.
Samsung has announced a new battery cell for electric vehicles that could enable 20 minute fast charging. The company plans to get that time down to 5 to 10 minutes:
Samsung's SDI battery subsidiary announced a new battery cell designed for use in electric vehicles that offers improved density to manage a max range of up to 372 miles on a full charge, with a quick charge capacity that will help it regain 310 miles or so of charge on just 20 minutes of charging. Unveiled at the North American International Auto Show for the first time, the new battery tech come with a 10 percent decrease in the number of units and weight required vs. current production battery units made by Samsung SDI.
Mass production isn't set to begin until 2021, but the tech should arrive in time to supply the first crop of autonomous cars, which are also targeting street dates sometime within that year from a range of manufacturers. EV and self-driving are tied closely to one another, since both are crucial components for operating the kind of on-demand ride-sharing fleets planned by Ford, among others.
Also at Engadget. Press release at Business Wire.
Samsung's SDI division is the same company that made the batteries used in the Galaxy Note 7 as well as the upcoming Galaxy S8. Samsung will reportedly reveal the cause of the Galaxy Note 7 overheating issues later this month, but the batteries are not expected to be the culprit.
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday January 11 2017, @03:04PM
Americans are also legendarily cheap, and will buy absolute shit as long as its 5% cheaper at walmart or the stealership,
True? I saw that Walmart didn't get a foot on the ground in Germany, when they tried around 2000 (+/- 5 years) because they couldn't compete with Aldi and LIDL price-wise, presumably due to costs of filling the shelves, service like packing the shopping bags, etc., while Aldi and Lidl have lower prices but a bit more rugged outfit, e.g. some of the goods displayed on their palettes in the store.
A quick search now shows that Aldi started attacking the US market again 2016, and also they started to rebuild their shops in Europe a bit more appealing, so maybe things changed a bit by now. Also some articles seem to make out more cultural reasons [huffingtonpost.com]
Walmart employees are required to stand in formation and chant, “WALMART! WALMART! WALMART!” while performing synchronized group calisthenics.
[...] maybe they found this oddly aggressive, mindless and exuberant exercise in group-think too reminiscent of other rallies....like one that occurred in Nuremberg several decades earlier.
Walmart requires its checkout people to flash smiles at customers after bagging their purchases. Plastic bags, plastic junk, plastic smiles. But because the German people don’t usually smile at total strangers, the spectacle of Walmart employees grinning like jackasses not only didn’t impress consumers, it unnerved them.
prohibited sexual intimacy among its employees. [...] had no problem with screwing the environment, [but] they couldn’t abide employees doing it to each other
while others also mention the price competition [nytimes.com].
Aldi, with 4,100 stores in Germany, undercuts Wal-Mart on price, while still offering high-quality food.
Personally, while I definitely don't like the Walmart culture as described in the Huffington Post article, was definitely mainly driven away by the higher grocery-prices at that time (wasn't earning well that time)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 11 2017, @10:28PM
e.g. some of the goods displayed on their palettes in the store.
How colorful!!